Hacking Cyberspace

Knowledge about cyberspace is shaped and delimited by the questions we ask and the kinds of inquiries we pursue. Questioning, of course, is never objective or neutral. As Martin Heidegger demonstrates, a question, no matter how carefully articulated, necessarily harbors preconceptions and pre-understandings that direct and regulate inquiry (24). When we ask, for example, whether cyberspace portends a new world of opportunity that is uninhibited by the limitations of embodiment and physical existence, or a techno-dystopia of alienation and surveillance where digital artifacts supersede lived reality, or something in between these two extremes, our query already affiliates us with the terms and conditions of a well-established debate and employs a complex set of assumptions concerning the essence, function, and significance of technology (see Critical Art Ensemble; Mattelart). This network of preconditions and assumptions usually does not appear as such within the space of a specific inquiry but constitutes the epistemological context in which any significant investigation is and must be situated. To continue to operate on the basis of these established systems is certainly understandable, completely rational, and potentially useful. Doing so, however, necessitates adherence to exigencies and prejudices that often remain unexamined, unquestioned, and essentially unknown. If we are to know how we know cyberspace, we need to devise methods of investigation that target and question the network of preconditions and assumptions that already inform and delimit our modes of inquiry. What is required are procedures that do not simply conform to the